Group Dynamics - LESSON 10 - Performance People join groups to get things done. Those people like workers, protectors, builders, decision makers and problem solvers are working together by the use of their abilities and talents to accomplish their goals and overwhelm themselves. Hence, they must perform, maximize their effort and coordinate in order to encounter problems effectively.

2. OVERVIEW
 DO PEOPLE WORK BETTER ALONE OR WITH
OTHERS?
 DO PEOPLE WORK AS HARD WHEN GROUPS AS
THEY DO WHEN WORKING BY THEMSELVES
 WHY ARE GROUPS MORE SUCCESFULL WHEN
WORKING ON SOME TASKS AND NOT ON
OTHERS?
 WHAT STEPS CAN BE TAKEN TO ENCOURAGE
CREATIVITY IN GROUPS?

3. What is performance?
 Definition of performance
1 a: the execution of an action
b: something accomplished
2 : the fulfillment of a claim, promise, or request
3 a: the action of representing a character in a play
b: a public presentation or exhibitiona benefit performance
4 a: the ability to perform
b: the manner in which a mechanism performs engine performance
5 : the manner of reacting to stimuli : BEHAVIOR

4. Social Facilitation
 The enhancement of an individual performance when working with other
people rather than working alone.
 Improvement in task performance that occurs when people work in the
presence of other people.

5. NORMAN TRIPPLET (1898)
 Riders achieved their best times when they competed or they were paced and
they are slowest when racing alone.

6. Coaction, Audiences and Inconsistencies
 COACTION – people working in the presence of other people, but not
necessarily interacting with one another.
 AUDIENCES – triggers social facilitation when other people watches them.
 INCONSISTENCY – other studies, did not confirm the “presence of people
improves performance” (Floyd Allport, 1920).

7. ZAJONC’S RESOLUTION
BY ROBERT ZAJONC (1965)
States that behavior are easier to learn and perform than others.
 DOMINANT RESPONSES – dominate all potential responses.
 NONDOMINANT RESPONSES – less likely to performed.
Zajonc’s insight was that the presence of others increases tendency to perform
dominant responses and decreases the tendency to perform nondominant
responses.

9. 4 General Explanation of Social Facilitation
1). DRIVE THEORY (ZAJONC 1965)
 Zajonc coined term word compresence – state of responding in the presence
of others.
 This theory maintains that the presence of others evokes a generalized drive
state characterized by increased readiness and arousal.

10. JAMES BLASCOVICH and his colleagues (1999)
verified that an audience triggers increases in cardiac and vascular activity.
 CHALLENGE RESPONSE – appeared to be ready to respond to the challenge
they faced.
 THREAT RESPONSE – appeared to be stress rather than ready for an effective
action.

11. 4 General Explanation of Social Facilitation
2). EVALUATION APPREHENSION THEORY (COTTRELL, 1972)
 Cottrell suggested that evaluative pressure is one of the reasons why people
tend to be more productive in the presence of others.
 This theory assumes that individuals learned through experience that other
people are source of most of the rewards and punishments.

12. Self- Presentation Theory
 Group members actively control others impressions of themselves by
displaying social behaviors that establish and maintain particular image or
face

13. 4 General Explanation of Social Facilitation
3). Distraction- Conflict Theory (BARON, 1986 & SANDERS,
1981)
 Distractions have been shown to improve performance on certain tasks.
 This theory suggest that distraction interferes with the attention given to
task, but that these distractions can be overcome with effort.
 STROOP TASK

14. 4 General Explanation of Social Facilitation
4). SOCIAL ORIENTATION THEORY (UZIEL, 2007)
 Suggest that people differ in orientation towards social situations, these
differences predicts who will show facilitation in the presence of others and
who will show impairment.
 POSITIVE ORIENTATION – self confident that they react positively to the
challenge.
 NEGATIVE ORIENTATION – approach social situation apprehensively, for they
feel inhibited and threated by people.

15. FOUR GENERALS EXPLAINATION OF SOCIAL FACILITATION

16. CONCLUSIONS AND APPLICATIONS
PREJUDICE AND SOCIAL FACILITATION
 presence of other people may lead individuals to express even more biased
opinions when they are in public rather than private.
 The presence of others may work to facilitate prejudice rather that keep it in
check
ELECTRONIC PERFORMANCE MONITORING (EPM)
 The use of information technologies such as computer network, to track,
analyze and report information about worker’s performance.

17. CONCLUSIONS AND APPLICATIONS
SOCIAL FACILITATION IN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS
 STUDY GROUP – self-organized and self-directive group formed by the
students for the purpose of studying course material.
 “JOIN A STUDY GROUP” – advice often given to college students who are
struggling in their classes.

18. Reduction in performance effectiveness or
efficiency caused by actions, operations, or
dynamics that prevent the group from reaching its
full potential, including reduced effort, faulty
group processes, coordination problems, and
ineffective leadership.
process
loss
PROCESS LOSSES IN GROUPS

19. The tendency, first documented by Max Ringelmann,
for people to become less productive when they work
with others; this loss of efficiency increases as group
size increases, but at a gradually decreasing rate.
Max Ringelmann (1913), a 19th-century
French agricultural engineer, was one of
the first researchers to study the
relationship between process loss and
group productivity.
Ringelmann
effect
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20. decline in productivity was caused by
motivation losses: people may not work so
hard when they are in groups
coordination losses, caused by “the lack of
simultaneity of their efforts”
Ringelmann identified two key sources of
process losses when people worked together.
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21. Ringelmann documented what others had noticed:
People sometimes do not work as hard as they could
when they are part of a group
social loafing
The reduction of individual effort exerted when
people work in groups compared to when they work
alone.
People carrying out all sorts of physical and mental tasks—
including brainstorming, evaluating employees, monitoring
equipment, interpreting instructions, and formulating
causal judgments—have been shown to exert less effort
when they combine their efforts in a group situation
Motivation Loss: Social Loafing

22. When people feel as though their level of effort
cannot be ascertained because the task is a
collective one, then social loafing becomes likely.
But when people feel that they are being
evaluated, they tend to exert more effort, and
their productivity increases.
Increase Identifiability
Causes and Cures for Social Loafing

23. If the task is an individualistic one, and is easy, the
presence of other people increases evaluation
apprehension, so social facilitation occurs.
But when group members are anonymous, and their
contributions are unidentifiable, the presence of
others reduces evaluation apprehension, and social
loafing becomes more likely
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24. free riding
Contributing less to a collective task when one
believes that other group members will
compensate for this lack of effort.
if they feel that the group does not need them or
their contribution, they will be tempted to free-
ride.
Minimize Free
Riding

25. When group members think that they are an
indispensable part of the group— perhaps because
their contribution is unique or essential for the
group’s success—they work harder
They also free-ride less in smaller groups, because
each person plays a larger role in determining the
group’s outcomes
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26. sucker effect
The tendency for individuals to contribute less to a
group endeavor when they expect that others will
think negatively of someone who works too hard or
contributes too much (considering them to be a
“sucker”).
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27. Groups that set clear, challenging goals outperform
groups whose members have lost sight of their
objectives.
members were more productive when they had a
clear standard by which to evaluate the quality of
their own work and the group’s work
The group’s goals should also be challenging rather
than too easily attained.
Set Goals
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28. Loafing is less likely when people are involved in their work.
Those who enjoy working with other people in groups,
because they value both the group experience and the
results they achieve, are less likely to loaf compared to less
group- and achievement-oriented individuals
Challenging, difficult tasks reduce loafing, but so do ones
that will determine group members’ personal outcomes—
either by reward or by punishment
Increase
Involvement
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29. Social loafing is also reduced when rewards for
successful performance are group-based rather than
individually based—so long as the group is not too
large in size and the reward is divided nearly equally
among all the group members
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30. social compensation
The tendency for group members to expend greater
effort on important collective tasks to offset the
anticipated insufficiencies in the efforts and
abilities of their co-members.
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31. Social identity theory also suggests a way to reduce
loafing: increase the extent to which group
members identify with their group
Social identity theory suggests that the difference
between a hard-working group and a loafing group is
the match between the group’s tasks and its
members’ self-definitions.
Increase Identification with the Group
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32. “This task is important to me,” but they are likely to work
even harder when they think, “This task is important to us”
then social loafing is replaced by social laboring
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33. A theoretical explanation of group productivity
developed by Steven Karau and Kipling Williams that
traces losses of productivity in groups to diminished
expectations about successful goal attainment and
the diminished value of group goals.
the Collective Effort Model
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34. comprehensive theoretical framework for
understanding the causes and cures of social loafing.
two factors determine group members’ level of
motivation:
- their expectations about reaching a goal
- the value of that goal.
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35. Motivation is greatest when people think that the
goal is within their reach (expectations are high)
and they consider the goal to be valuable.
Motivation diminishes if expectations are low or
individuals do not value the goal.
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37. Task Demand
 The effect that a problem or task’s features,
including it’s divisibility and difficulty, have on the
procedures the group can use to complete the task.

38. Divisible Task
 The task has sub-components that can be identified
and assigned to specific members.

39. Unitary Task
 The task does not have sub-components

40. Maximizing Task
(Quantity):The more produced the better the performance
Optimizing Task
(Quality): High-quality , correct solution

42. Additive Task
 When all group members perform the same job and
group performance is a sum of individual
performance.

43. Compensatory Task
 Average their individual judgements or solutions
together to yield the groups outcome.

44. Disjunctive Task
 The group performance is dependent upon the
abilities of the best member.

45. Conjunctive Task
 Group Performance is dependent on the weakest
member.

46. Intellective Task
 A project, problem, or other type of task with
results that can be evaluated objectively and
judged as right or wrong.
Judgmental Task
 A project, problem, or other type of task with
results that cannot be evaluated objectively
because there are no clear criteria to judge them
against.

47. Discretionary Task
 A relatively unstructured task that can be completed by using a variety of
social combination procedure, thus leaving the methods used in its
completion to the discretion of the group or group leader.

48. Process gains in group
 According to Steiner’s theory argued that group
success depends, ultimately on the resources that the
group members contribute and the processes that
determine how their inputs are combined coordinate.
 People work in a groups, they sometimes gain new
solutions, energy, and insights into old problems that
they would never have achieved as individuals.

49. Brainstorming
A group problem-solving technique
that involves the spontaneous
contribution of idea from all members
of the group

50. Four basic rules of brainstorming:
Be expressive
Postpone evaluation
Seek quantity
Piggyback ideas

51. Does Brainstorming work?

52. Alternative Brainstorming
Capable of generating fresh
ideas and new insights into
old preoblems

53. Electronic Brainstorming
Allows members to communicate
via the internet rather than face-
to-face.